Vootie's blog

That's the question you might well ask yourself, after perusing the clip below. It provides a taste of what's on the DVD accompanying the latest issue of IdN magazine, which includes 96 minutes of work from 27 motion graphics practitioners. Compelling enough but the contents of this issue, devoted to the theme of Character Design, are also of interest, a few spreads of which are included below. The disc and magazine bundle can be purchased on the IdN site for $19.95.

We know Vincent Van Gogh pretty well, thanks to his many self-portraits, but actual photographs of him are rare. In fact, there seems to be just one (shown below) and it's not entirely authenticated. So Lithuanian photographer Tadao Cern's project to create a "what-might-have-been" portrait photo of Van Gogh is not without interest. He shows the process in the clip above.

It's hard to know at this point whether Adobe has just pulled off a brilliant viral marketing move or has simply screwed up. I'm speaking here of the current abillity to freely download the entire Creative Suite 2 from Adobe's site, which almost collapsed from the load once this became known. Admittedly, using software released in 2005 isn't everyone's idea of a good time and in fact you might have trouble running it at all, given the hardware and operating systems for which it was created. But still.

It's certainly an experience familiar to New Yorkers, who live in what serves as the setting for countless movies — that sense of suddenly feeling that your locale is familiar, without quite being able to place it. When in fact you've previously only experienced your current location within a movie. Christopher Moloney had the inspired idea to take photos of locales used in movies in New York and around the world. He then superimposed on them stills from the movies themselves, while right on location, as it were.

Why not? After all, few bother reading traditional paper-based annual reports. So if you're a branding and design firm, creating a ssummary of your 2012 achievements that's expressed in graphical form makes perfect sense. At least, it worked out prettty well for St. Louis-based TOKY, which included such nuggets as a graphic demonstration of its new printer being the size of an adult rhinoceros. Thought: how would you go about expressing your own 2012 high points as an infographic?

So you thought the lingering global economic malaise had crushed out the once-promising global initiative that explored the possibilities for positive change within the intersection of design and the quaint concept of "service to the greater good"? Not so! In fact, this laudable trend seems to be gaining momentum, by what I can judge from the folks at Public Interest Design. They recently posted an infographic profiling 100 of those who are at the leading edge of what they dub "a groundbreaking movement." In the optimistic spirit of a fresh new year, let's hope they're right and that this soon shifts from being a movement to simply how things are done.

Although the pressure was actually on Adobe to add touch-sensitivity to the tablet version of Photoshop, given that this functionality has been provided by more than a few mobile image editing and creation apps for some time now. But better late than never. In the clip below, Terry White shows off the new capabilities.

Von Glitschka is a talented illustrator, with more more than a few well-known names amongst his clients. But times are tough all over. Hence the launch of his recent initiative, 5ive Minute Logo. What’s it all about? In his words: “Why shouldn’t logo design be instantly gratifying? It should be! Life’s too short to waste time on complex and costly logo design projects. I’ve solved this problem while making the whole process fast and easy!” Well, thank goodness for that. Given the bleak economic climate, I guess we should anticipate more initiatives like this in 2013.

That's right, it's time once again for The New Yorker's annual Eustace Tilley Contest, now in its sixth year. The iconic Eustace Tilley character, who returns to grace anniversary issues each year, was drawn by Rea Irvin, the magazine’s first art editor, for the cover of the first issue of The New Yorker in 1925, with readers invited for some years now to contibute Tilley reinterpretations.

Launched in London in 2004, Contagious describes itself as "Operating at the intersection of marketing communications, new technology and consumer behaviour." It's perhaps best known for its flagship magazine, app and online resource but also produces related events and its annual Most Contagious report.